Smart TV Owners Are Using AI Agents to Rip Out the Ads

Built-in privacy menus can switch off much of the tracking, but Google says ads on Google TV can't be turned off.

Gathin's parents had a TV that played a sponsored ad before anyone could get to Netflix. Gathin's fix, as described in a post on X: "Gave Claude Code the model number, it found the TV on wifi, removed 25 Xiaomi packages and wrote a new launcher."

That post reportedly passed 6 million views, according to 404 Media, which reported Tuesday that people are pointing AI tools at their own gadgets to rip out what the maker put in. The outlet found owners turning smart picture frames into calendars, scrubbing ads off baby monitors, bringing dead Lululemon mirrors back to life and stripping the extra software out of dozens of TVs.

Most TV owners won't hand their set to an AI agent. They don't have to for much of the tracking, because the TV's own menus can switch a lot of it off. What those menus mostly can't do is remove the ads, and that's the part the hackers are after.

Google says so outright. Its Google TV help page, as of Tuesday, says ads can't be turned off. Owners can only reset or delete the device's advertising ID, and apps can still serve ads based on other information.

Tracking is a separate system. Many smart TVs run automatic content recognition, or ACR, which reads pixels off the screen to figure out what's playing, even from a cable box or a game console, Tom's Guide explained in a January walkthrough. Here's where the off switches are, from that guide and Google's page. Labels differ from one set to the next, and they can shift with a software update or by region.

• Google TV and Android TV: Settings, then Privacy, then Ads, then Delete advertising ID. Sony sets carry a second ACR system, Samba Interactive TV, to turn off under System or Privacy.
• Samsung: Settings, Support, Terms & Privacy, Privacy Choices. Turn off Viewing Information Services, which is Samsung's ACR, plus Interest-Based Advertising and Voice Recognition Services.
• LG: Turn off Live Plus under Settings, then General or System. Under Advertisements, turn on Limit Ad Tracking or Do Not Sell My Personal Information, then opt out of the viewing and ad items under User Agreements.
• Roku: Settings, Privacy, Smart TV Experience, then uncheck Use Info from TV Inputs. Ad controls are under Advertising in the same menu.
• Amazon Fire TV: Settings, Preferences, Privacy Settings. Turn off Device Usage Data, Collect App and Over-the-Air Usage, and Interest-Based Ads.
• Vizio: Settings, Admin & Privacy. Turn off Viewing Data and Advertising.

None of it costs anything. Tom's Guide said these switches stop most tracking based on what's watched and most ad targeting, though some sets still send limited diagnostic data home.

The mistake is treating the AI route as the same fix with fewer steps. Owners have revived locked-down and abandoned gadgets for years using open-source projects that hobby groups spent hundreds of hours building, 404 Media noted. An AI-written launcher has nobody like that behind it, only the person who asked for it, running on a device that sits on the home Wi-Fi.

404 Media's analysis says AI-cloned software is often full of bugs its users don't understand and run anyway. It warns that weak, insecure code on home hardware will get devices and networks hacked, and that attackers are likely to try slipping malware into it. Plenty of these clones may never prove dependable, Mike Nolan, a researcher of open-source software politics, warned in an interview with 404 Media: "there's a lot of work associated with maintaining software."

Source: 404media.co, retrieved October 20, 2026. Other sources: 404media.co (2), support.google.com, tomsguide.com.